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The Power of Simple Prayer
How to Talk with God about Everything
By Joyce Meyer Faithwords
Copyright © 2007 Joyce Meyer
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-446-53196-2
Chapter One
Lord, Teach Me
I want to ask you a question: do you believe your prayers are really making a difference? Think about it: deep in your heart, do you ever wonder if God is hearing you when you pray? When you finish praying, are you convinced that your prayers have accomplished something? Are you satisfied with your prayer life? Do you really know how to pray? Are you longing for a deeper, richer, more dynamic relationship with God through prayer?
If you are like thousands of others I have encountered in more than thirty years of ministry, you are saying, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" As I have traveled and interacted with people, I have discovered that people really want to pray; they want to know that God hears their prayers and that their prayers are being effective. People want to grow in their prayer lives and to see their prayers become more powerful as they pray for others and for themselves. In fact, a 2005 survey of more than eight hundred pastors in the United States revealed that only 16 percent say they are "very satisfied" with their prayer lives. That leaves an overwhelming 84 percent who feel their prayer lives could definitely be better. Like the pastors in the survey, there are countless others who are not satisfied with their prayer lives. They are not sure God is really listening when they talk to Him; they do not understand why some prayers seem to go unanswered; they wonder if they are praying "right" or praying enough. They are generally frustrated in their prayer lives, eager to know what to do to feel more connected with God and to gain confidence that their prayers really do make a difference. If ministers feel this way, what must their congregations say?
One of the most important, most life-changing prayers a person can ever utter is: "Lord, teach me to pray." It is not just, "Lord, teach me to pray," but, "Lord, teach me to pray." You see, knowing about prayer is really not enough; we have to know how to pray as individuals who are in an intimate, dynamic personal relationship with the God to whom we pray. Although there are principles of prayer that apply to everyone, we are individuals and God will lead each of us individually. I attended many "prayer seminars," and then attempted to duplicate in my prayer experience what I heard others say about their own prayers. Eventually, though, I realized God had a personalized plan for me-a way for me to communicate most effectively with Him-and I needed to say, "Lord teach me to pray."
I believe many people today are asking the same questions Jesus' disciples asked almost 2000 years ago: "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 11:1). Even though they spent a great deal of up-close and personal time with Him, listening to Him, learning from Him, and watching Him work miracles, they still felt the need for His instruction on prayer. The disciples went to Jesus as a group asking Him to teach them to pray, but as I made that same request as an individual, God answered me in a powerful way and brought wonderful improvements to my prayer life.
For example:
I have moved from praying panic-based, carnal, soulish prayers (prayers that come from a person's mind, will, or emotions) to praying Spirit-filled, Spirit-led, faith-based prayers.
I no longer focus primarily on prayers for my "outer life" (my circumstances, the activities I am involved in, the things that happen around me). I now pray for my inner life (the condition of my heart, my spiritual growth, my attitudes, and my motives). As God has taught me to pray, I have learned that my job is to pray to be strengthened internally and to ask Him to help me live out of a pure heart from the right motives; and His job is to take care of the externals.
I have gone from laboring and striving to pray for five minutes every few days to enjoying-and actually personally needing and wanting-beginning my day with prayer, then to praying throughout the day as things come to my heart, and finally ending my day communicating with the Lord as I fall asleep.
I have moved from a sporadic, irregular prayer life to regular times of prayer that are disciplined without being legalistic.
Where I once thought I was fulfilling an obligation to God by praying, I now realize that I absolutely cannot survive a day and be satisfied and content if I do not pray. I realize that prayer is a great privilege, not a duty.
I no longer approach God in fear, wondering if He will really hear me and send an answer to my prayers. I now approach Him boldly, as His Word teaches me to do, and with great expectation.
I believe if you will ask God to teach you to pray too, that you will also experience great changes in the way you pray, increased effectiveness in your prayers, tremendous satisfaction in your relationship with God, and a refreshing freedom and enjoyment in prayer.
In this book, I will provide you with a substantial amount of teaching on prayer. I hope you will learn from these insights, but I know that God is the only one who can take this information and cause it to spring to life so that prayer becomes exhilarating, exciting, and effective for you. I am praying and believing that He will do that for you in an incredible, life-changing way.
God is the only one who can take this information and cause it to spring to life so that prayer becomes exhilarating, exciting, and effective for you.
God will take the biblical information I will be sharing and help you apply it in ways that will be just right for you, your personality, and the particular season you are in at this time in your life. For example, a mother with four very young children may not be able to spend the first hour of each day praying. She has many duties to attend to and some of them won't wait. She is in a season of her life that won't last forever and God will lead her to pray in ways that work for her during that time. She can begin her day with prayer and pray throughout the day, but not necessarily in the same manner as a woman who no longer has children at home and can make her own time schedule.
I remember attending a prayer seminar and listening to an elderly woman speak about how she prayed every morning from five to nine. She had been doing that for many years and had the grace from God to do so. I did not yet understand the special abilities that God gives each of us, so I went home determined to do the same thing she did. All I did was get bored and sleepy after about the first fifteen minutes! Through that experience and others like it, I learned that we cannot compare our prayer lives with those of other people. We are all unique and God has a unique plan for each of us. The Bible teaches us that He gives each of us grace to do something and we should do whatever that is with our whole heart. The woman at the prayer conference had the grace from God to pray for hours each day. Similarly, I have grace to study for a very long time because I am called as a teacher in God's kingdom. I encourage you to be all you can be, but don't try to be what only someone else can be. God will never help you be anyone but you!
IT'S PERSONAL
Everything about our spiritual lives depends on our personal faith in God and our personal relationship with Him. We can enjoy that relationship because Jesus' death on the cross gives us free, unhindered access to our heavenly Father and our faith makes it possible for us to have an intimate, dynamic relationship with Him.
I recently read Ephesians 3:12, which says: "In Whom, because of our faith in Him, we dare to have the boldness (courage and confidence) of free access (an unreserved approach to God with freedom and without fear)." As I meditated upon this Scripture, I became quite excited to realize that as ordinary human beings we have free access to God at any time through prayer. We can approach Him boldly without reserve, without fear, and with complete freedom. How awesome is that! Personal faith in God opens the door to unlimited help from Him.
Early in my prayer journey, I came across a wonderful little book that has helped millions of believers over the years learn how to pray. In this classic volume, titled With Christ in the School of Prayer, Andrew Murray addresses this matter of asking God to teach us to pray, and writes: "None can teach like Jesus, none but Jesus; therefore we call on Him, 'Lord, teach us to pray.' A pupil needs a teacher, who knows his work, who has the gift of teaching, who in patience and love will descend to the pupil's needs. Blessed be God! Jesus is all this and much more ... Jesus loves to teach us how to pray." Don't just try to pray, ask Jesus to teach you!
Jesus not only loves to teach us-corporately-how to pray, He also loves to work with us as individuals. He wants to take us just the way we are and help each of us discover our own rhythm of prayer and develop a style of prayer that maximizes our personal relationship with Him. He wants prayer to be an easy, natural, life-giving way of communicating with Him as we share our hearts with Him and allow Him to share His heart with us. Prayer is so simple; it is nothing more than talking to God. It also includes listening to what He has to say. God speaks to us in many ways. If you desire to learn more about how He speaks, I encourage you to read my book entitled How to Hear from God.
God is far too creative to teach every person on earth to interact with Him through prayer in exactly the same way. He is the one who designed us all differently and delights in our distinctiveness. As I stated previously, there are "prayer principles" that apply to all believers, but God leads each of us as individuals. We are all in different places in our walk with Him, we are all at different levels of spiritual maturity, and we all have had different types of experiences in prayer. When we learn principles of prayer, we need to move beyond intellectual knowledge about how to pray and take those principles to the Lord and say, "Teach me to apply this in my life, in my situation, to my heart. Show me how this idea is supposed to work for me. God, I'm depending on You to teach me how to pray, to make me effective in prayer, to make my relationship with You through prayer the richest, most rewarding aspect of my life."
EMBRACE YOUR UNIQUENESS
Because we relate to God as individuals-and that's the way He wants it-we pray as individuals. Even when we pray corporately with others, we are all still individuals; we simply join our hearts with others as one voice. During these corporate prayer times, I believe that God wants our hearts to be in unity much more than He wants our methods to be the same. When we say, "Lord, teach me to pray," we are asking Him to teach us to pray in a distinctly personal way and to enable our prayers to be easy, natural expressions of who we are. We are not supposed to check our individuality at the door of the prayer closet. We need to go before God just the way we are and give Him the pleasure of enjoying the company of the "original" He has made each one of us to be. We need to approach God with our own strengths, weaknesses, uniqueness, and everything else that so wonderfully distinguishes us from everyone else in the world. God enjoys meeting us where we are, developing a personal relationship with us and helping us grow to become everything He wants us to be.
Because God has fashioned our hearts individually, our prayers need to flow naturally out of our hearts and be consistent with the way He has designed us.
Psalm 33:15 says, "He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works"(NKJV). Because God has fashioned our hearts individually, our prayers need to flow naturally out of our hearts and be consistent with the way He has designed us. As we develop our individual styles of communication with God, we can learn from people who may be more experienced than we are, but we need to be careful not to make them our standard. I hope to be an example to many, but I want Jesus to be their standard. There is nothing at all wrong with incorporating something someone else is doing into your own prayer life if you truly feel led by God's Spirit to do so. But, it is wrong to force yourself to do what others do if you are not comfortable with that in your spirit. Do not try to keep up with others or copy their prayer styles-and do not feel compelled to work every prayer principle you have ever learned every time you pray.
Most people are afraid not to be like everyone else. Many people are more comfortable following specified rules than daring to follow the leading of God's Spirit. When we follow man-made rules, we please people, but when we step out in faith and follow God's Spirit, we please Him. We do not need to feel pressured to pray a certain way or for a certain length of time or to focus on specific things because other people are doing so. Instead, we need to be free to express our uniqueness as we pray the way God is teaching us as individuals.
Somehow we feel safe when we are doing what everyone else is doing, but the sad thing is that we will feel unfulfilled until we learn to "untie the boat from the dock," so to speak, and let the ocean of God's Spirit take us wherever He wills. When we are in control, we know what will happen next, but when we let God's Spirit take the lead, we are in for a lot of surprises in life. We need to be determined to be ourselves and refuse to spend our lives feeling guilty because we are not like someone else.
My husband, Dave, has a passion to pray for the United States of America and he does so on a regular basis. I have a passion to see God's children mature. I also have a great passion for the poor and oppressed, so I spend much of my prayer time praying about these situations. I know some people who focus intensely on the abortion issue when they pray and others who focus on missions with the same type of fervor. My point is that God places different things on each of our hearts and, in that way, everything is covered. No one can pray about everything that needs to be prayed about every day, but God's Spirit leads each of us if we allow Him.
I suffered for a long time before I learned what I am sharing with you and I don't want you to suffer as I did. Let my pain be your gain! Start right now asking Jesus to teach you as an individual how to apply to your life all of the principles of prayer you have ever been taught in His own unique way for you. I believe variety is the key to enjoying everything, including prayer, so let God's Spirit lead you to use various principles as they are needed in your personal situations.
THE KEY TO PRAYER
If I had to identify the most important key to effective prayer, I would say that it is approaching God as His friend. When we go to God believing that He sees us as His friends, new wonders are opened to us. We experience freedom and boldness, which are both necessary to effective prayer.
If we do not know God as a friend, and if we are not confident that He thinks of us as His friends, we will be reluctant to tell Him what we need or to ask Him for anything. If we have stiff, distant relationships with God, our prayers can be legalistic. But if we go to Him as our friend, without losing our awe of Him, our prayers will stay fresh, exciting, and intimate.
A natural friendship involves loving and being loved. It means knowing that someone is on your side, wanting to help you, cheering you on, and always keeping your best interest in mind. A friend is someone you value, a comrade, a partner, someone who is dear to you, someone you want to spend time with, and someone you enjoy. You become someone's friend by investing time in them and with them, and by sharing your life with that person.
Developing your friendship with God is similar to developing a friendship with someone on earth. It takes time. The truth is that you can be as close to God as you want to be; it all depends on the time you are willing to invest in the relationship. I encourage you to get to know Him by spending time in prayer and in the Word. Your friendship with God will also deepen and grow as you walk with Him over time on a regular basis and as you experience His faithfulness. The difference between developing a relationship with God as a friend and building relationships with people is that with God, you end up with a friend who is perfect! One who will never leave you nor forsake you. One who is faithful, dependable, loving, and forgiving.
You can be as close to God as you want to be; it all depends on the time you are willing to invest in the relationship.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Power of Simple Prayer by Joyce Meyer Copyright © 2007 by Joyce Meyer. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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